But what's with libertarians who support school vouchers? Why do they support what is clearly an anti-libertarian program?

The core principle of libertarianism is what is called the non-aggression principle. It holds that it is morally wrong for anyone to initiate force against someone else. When someone declares himself a libertarian, he implicitly or explicitly is saying that he will never support the initiation of force against another person.

Yet, that is precisely what school vouchers entail — the initiation of force against others. To collect the money that is used to fund the vouchers, the state initiates force against people in the form of tax collection. 

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, there is nothing voluntary about taxation. The state uses force or the threat of force to collect taxes. If someone refuses to pay his taxes, the state forces him into jail and forcibly takes his property away from him. If the victim fights back with deadly force, the state will kill him.

Thus, the state initiates force against people to collect taxes and then uses the money to fund the vouchers. It would be difficult to find a better example of a clear violation of the libertarian non-aggression principle than that.

As I wrote in the September 1990 issue of FFF's monthly journal, school vouchers are just another "futile attempt to make socialism work more efficiently." Conservatives and conservative-oriented libertarians love couching this socialist reform plan as "pro-freedom" because, they say, it gives "choices" to the recipients of the vouchers. In fact, conservatives and conservative-oriented libertarians often refer to the voucher system as "school choice."